Cloud, open source power TransLink's Web presence

It was an aging bespoke application that drove TransLink to seek a new content management system, but it was the strength of the community surrounding the open source project that helped the Queensland public transport agency choose Drupal.

Prior to the switch to Drupal, which began last year, the former TransLink site was partly based on static files and partly on a "home-grown CMS that managed a lot of our custom content such as service disruption and events, so that we could do a little bit of distributed authoring within the organisation," said Natalie Gorring, manager, online products and services, at TransLink.

The old CMS, based on the Yii Web framework "was a few years old and needed updates," Gorring said. "As the TransLink website was evolving, we weren't able to keep up with updating the CMS that we had." As a result, TransLink started looking for alternatives.

The organisation reviewed a number of open source and proprietary CMSes, and Drupal came out on top. The open source project's active community was a factor in the decision, Gorring said. In addition, the TransLink team had in-house PHP skills, and that was also a factor in choosing the new CMS.

For the transition, TranLink relied heavily on its in-house skills but partnered with Acquia, the Boston-based company founded by Drupal creator Dries Buytaert, for hosting. The TransLink site is hosted in Acquia's cloud service, Gorring said.

"The [Queensland] government at the moment is very supportive of cloud and data sharing," Gorring said.

Going with a cloud service "took some pressure off our business systems team, and we have a contract with Acquia for 24-hour support," Gorring said. The TransLink site gets around 130,000 unique visits daily.

The initial scope of the Drupal project was a 'like for like' transition, replicating the organisation's existing website using the open source CMS. "We didn't have the time to add new features at the time," Gorring said. "For customers there was no difference, except maybe a few URL changes."

The transition took place over a period of around nine months, beginning late last year.

The Web team has tweaked some Drupal modules as well as written its own custom module. Gorring said that the service update section of the TransLink website is based on a custom content type and also provides the organisation's call centre staff with a mechanism to tweet information from within the CMS.

"The change to Drupal was really well received," Gorring said. "It's something that our content editors were craving, because we just couldn't support the old CMS any more." Some 40 people use the CMS.

"Going forward we plan to utilise some of the modules that have already been developed by the community," Gorring added. "We'll probably look at the language translation modules, and also some of the A-B testing modules so that marketing can really test their campaigns."

The organisation is considering a website redesign sometime in the 12 months, implementing a responsive design, Gorring said. More than half of TransLink's Web traffic comes from mobile devices, she added.

"We have an adaptive design at the moment; we're not fully responsive, but we will be looking at updating to the Bootstrap framework," Gorring said.

There are also plans to add 'regionalisation' to the website. "When you look at sites like the Qantas website you can change your country or your region and have local content delivered to you. We're hot on the heels of a project to allow that ability on the website."

Top Whitepapers

More and more government agencies are turning to a BYOD strategy. While this can make more transactions mobile and potentially decrease IT costs, they may also make the agency vulnerable to security breaches.
•One of the biggest threats is social engineering, a process by which an adversary tricks the user into offering up information or access rights.
•While there are several types of social engineering to be on the lookout for, there are three dominant attacks to watch
•As agencies debate expanded device and data management policies, creating a divide between personal and professional content is essential

Featured Whitepapers

How do you ensure you are choosing the right threat intelligence solution for your organization?
The recent Forrester Research, Inc. report, “Use Actionable Threat Intelligence to Protect Your Digital Business,” describes the characteristics of effective threat intelligence and what to look for in a threat intelligence vendor (August 2014).

Copyright 2015 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.